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Wednesday, August 08, 2018

As many are aware, social media is exploding with people yelling at each other, pushing agendas, etc. What is not often mentioned, however, is the apparent air of desperation coming from the right. Allow me to elaborate ...

Today I logged on to Facebook, and was immediately greeted by the following items on my timeline:

A video from the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) explaining why Planned Parenthood's efforts to halt legislation that would remove their funding is actually good for doctors.

Another video from DCNF saying that LeBron James needs to stay in his lane, and that the interview with Don lemon was nothing more than a blatant, naked attempt to discredit all the good trump has done.

A video from Fox News' Stuart Varney explaining why kicking people off of food stamps, etc. is a good thing.

A video from Laura Ingraham saying that the time is coming when all rational people will realize what good things trump has done.

Videos from the Daily Caller and CRTV that imply that Obama is at the root of Chicago's gang violence, and that the city is bypassing its mayor to ask trump fro help with the problem.

A number of postings from right-wingers demanding that liberals list "what rights they have lost under trump," apparently knowing that it is virtually impossible to answer such a question at all, much less in the current fact-free environment that is the White House.

A video from DCNF mocking "trump anxiety disorder" with the implication that liberals are just plain weak-minded.

A video from CRTV making a point that the Russian hacking was actually Obama's fault because he chose not to launch an investigation during the campaign for fear of being accused of trying to sway the election.

So I have a couple of points I want to raise about this.

First, are the inherent contradictions in their own arguments. Let's look at the Russia investigation, for example. The position of the left is that Russian interference in our election happened, and the investigation is there to determine the scope of the invasion (and that's exactly what it was), who was involved, and how to prevent it from happening again.
The position of the right can best be summed up by what would appear to be a drunken stream on consciousness by a pathological liar: "Russia? There was no Russian involvement in the election, so we don't need an investigation by the FBI, which you would know if the FBI had been allowed to examine the DNC servers for Russian hacking that didn't happen, and it's Obama's fault anyway for not launching the investigation sooner into this Russian meddling that we don't believe ever happened in the first place, and what about Hillary's emails? Huh? What about Benghazi? What about Obama not being an American citizen because he was born in Kenya or Hawaii before it was a state or the planet Weebo or something? MAGA."

Second, and far more telling in my opinion, is that the sheer volume of material being put out there by the right seems to hint at an air of desperation, almost as if they know they are full of it and trying to hide it under a mountain of accusations, false allegations, and outright bullshit. To paraphrase the Bard, "Methinks they doth protest too much."

Every time trump does something stupid (which, let's face it, happens at least every fifteen minutes or so, on average), we see the following activity:

A news story comes out reporting on trump's latest Twitter spat with someone -- Lebron James, Rosie O'Donnell, the New York Times, whatever -- or his latest idiotic policy proposal (such as selling planes that don't exist to Norway).

The Right Wing Shriek Factory spins up into full production mode and unleashes a torrent of roughly 18,000 social media posts explaining why what trump did wasn't so stupid after all, if only those stupid, brainless liberals would get their heads out of their asses and stop filling the blogosphere with so much hate and just accept trump as their president, and if they don't then we should be able to hunt them for sport, which we can't do because they are too busy crying about Hillary losing the election and taking our guns away and they're all stupid and anti-American and Hillary is a pedophile running a child porn ring out of the basement of a pizza place in DC that has no basement and MAGA, MAGA, MAGA.

It's just sad, really. Pathetic. Stuart Varney, Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Piriro, and -- the ultimate connoisseur of trumpian anal vintage -- Sean Hannity, along with the myriad other lesser players in the Right Wing Shriek Factory, all need to stop peddling the lies, as it is becoming endemic. Fox News, which a few years back was considered to be a "right leaning source of news," is now classified as "nonsense damaging to public discourse" and is rapidly moving in to fill the role of "sanctioned state media" -- much like the role Russia Today plays for Vladimir Putin.

At the rate we're going, it's only a matter of time before all media, social or otherwise, is nothing more than a gigantic trump rally.